1. Field of the Invention
The invention is in the field of sport and medicine, in particular exercise devices, more exactly—cardiovascular machines.
2. Background Art
There exists an elliptical exercise device in the prior art that consists of movable steps or pedals, which move along a closed curve. The exercise device contains a crank gear, installed on the foundation and connecting the rods, which support the steps or pedals. The ends of the rods opposite to the crank gear are provided with the rolls, and they move back and forth along the horizontal or inclined guides; or the ends of the rods are hung and perform a jigging motion along an arc, the radius of which is the length of the pendant, when the crank gear is rotating. At the same time, the steps or pedals are moving along the closed curve, approximating an elliptical path.
Prior art patent U.S. Pat. No. 5,242,343 dd. Sep. 30, 1992 shows an exercise device that imitates feet movement, resembling the movement when training on a treadmill and on an exercise bicycle simultaneously. The feet of the user training on this exercise device are placed parallel to the plane of the closed curve, along which the steps or pedals are moving. The exercise device imitates bipedal locomotion and creates effective load on the front and back muscles of the legs, but it practically doesn't load (stress or exercise) internal and external muscles of the legs, which may be loaded when walking or running sideways and even better when walking or step touch running.
The steps or pedals of the exercise device are set longitudinally and have dimensions sufficient to put the foot lengthwise to the exercise device. The length of the steps or pedals exceeds a foot length of an adult more than enough, and the lateral dimension exceeds the foot width of an adult more than enough. The foot length of an adult man reaches 33 centimeters that corresponds to the 50th shoe size according to the European size chart. The human foot width is approximately 0.3-0.4 of the foot length and reaches 10-12 cm. The steps or pedals of elliptical exercise devices used nowadays have length within 35-45 cm and width of 15-20 cm. The minimal foot length of an adult woman is about 21-22 cm that corresponds to the 35th shoe size according to the European size chart. It means that even a petite woman with minimal shoe size can't comfortably and securely put the feet across the steps or pedals of the exercise device and perform “walking sideways” exercise, which loads the internal and external muscles of the legs. The steps or pedals of the elliptical exercise device move in antiphase, when the trajectories of the steps or pedals movement are identical and symmetrical towards the relative vertical longitudinal plane, located longitudinally in the middle of the exercise device. This trajectory imitates upright bipedal locomotion, it doesn't suit much to walking sideways and doesn't suit at all to touch step, as in this case the legs of the person move overlapping to the full length of the step or pedal. And the man, when walking sideways, performs overlapping of the legs at approximately 30-40% of the step or pedal length, and when performing the touch step, he joins one foot to another. To perform the touch step, it is necessary for the trajectories of the feet movement to be distributed along the length of the exercise device and not to coincide with the length of the exercise device step or pedal plus the width of two steps or pedals with sufficient gap between them. Apart from that, the steps or pedals of the elliptical exercise device are separated to the width suitable for the right position of the feet in bipedal locomotion, approximately at 25-30 cm, and when performing the touch step, the feet of a person move in one and the same plane.